This probably will only amuse my Cornell friends who were forced to rely on The Elements of Style for everything we wrote. The book was first written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918 for his Cornell students. Subsequently New Yorker writer E.B. White (of “Stuart Little” and “Charlotte’s Web” fame) came across it and wrote about it in the magazine. This attracted a publishers’ attention and White was contracted to revise it for a new edition, published in 1959.

From Youtube: “The classic grammar manual the Elements of Style gets the rap treatment in the video above. It may be the only time you see authors Strunk and White posing with a 40-ounce bottle of Old English 500.”